Advice that shows its scope
State what you reviewed, show what the records say, and keep your recommendations clearly apart from the evidence.
The first client question is how you chose
Competitor reviews rarely fail on the screenshots. They fail when a client asks why these brands, which months, which countries, and whether anything is missing, and the honest answers are scattered across your notes. Across several clients the habits drift further, and no two memos describe their scope the same way. A confident recommendation resting on an unstated sample is easy to pull apart.
Ad8 records coverage for each Page, market and period, using four states: checked for this scope, partial, pending, and unavailable or failed. That gives a consultant something firm to build on: a scope you can write down before the analysis begins, and limits you can point to afterward. It cannot make a thin sample broad, but it makes the thinness visible.
A scope you can sign before you look
Write the rules first, so the sample cannot drift toward whatever happens to look interesting.
Treat the inclusion rules as a small contract with the client. If the scope changes, the memo says so, and the findings are read against the new scope.
Agree the decision. Put the client’s question in one sentence and name who will act on the answer.
Write inclusion rules. Say why each Page is in: direct rival, substitute or creative reference. Add the markets and a date window, and do it before you read any ads.
Check coverage per Page. Note each check’s state and last-checked time. Compare patterns only across comparable samples, and never read a failed or partial check as a brand gone quiet.
Write in three layers. What the records show, what you think it means and how sure you are, and what the client could test. Keep the layers visibly separate.
Pre-write the hard questions. Draft answers to “why not Brand Z?” and “is this everything?” from your scope notes, and mark unknowns as unknown.
A fictional readout: a regional furniture retailer
Imagine an independent consultant preparing a readout for an imaginary regional furniture retailer. His scope note names direct rivals, a national substitute and one aspirational reference, across the markets the client sells in. One rival’s history starts partway through the window, so that Page is flagged partial.
His findings: the rivals’ static ads lean on delivery-speed offers, while the reference brand leads with room styling. His interpretation, labeled as his, is that offers may be crowding out product education. His recommendation is one test of an education-led headline, measured in the client’s own systems.
When the client asks about a competitor who is missing, the inclusion rule answers. When the client asks whether it worked for the rivals, the memo says what the records cannot show.
“Why isn’t Brand Z in this review?”
Brand Z falls outside the inclusion rules: it is not a direct rival, a substitute or a creative reference. It can be added as a scope change.
The deliverable: a scope and findings memo
A short memo in four parts: the question, the scope note with a coverage table, findings with record references, and recommendations marked as hypotheses. Date it and name the checks it relies on, so a later reader knows what the evidence looked like at the time. Close with open questions and the date you would look again. The same skeleton carries over to the next client, which keeps your method steady while the evidence changes.
Comprendre la couverture des donnéesLimits to put in writing
Ad8 shows collected ad records, not competitor spend, results or audience settings, so avoid market-share language. The proposed plan is one user and one workspace, with no client separation, client portal or white labeling, so keep each client’s findings in your own documents and never share a login. Recommendations are test hypotheses, not forecasts. If your practice needs more than that, describe it before you plan around it.
Parlez-nous de vos besoins de rechercheCommencez par une meilleure question créative.
Explorez l’exemple. Examinez la formule proposée. Voyez comment Ad8 pourrait s’intégrer à votre flux de recherche.